The present invention relates to a printer apparatus and an electronic camera having a print mechanism.
At present, an electronic camera with a print function has been proposed, which prints a captured image on a self-development type film (print paper) such as an instant film. The electronic camera with the print function can trim and enlarge a predetermined area of the captured image at the time of printing (a print zoom process). In addition, the electronic camera can digitally enlarge a predetermined area within an imaging screen at the time of imaging (an imaging zoom process). In this way, the electronic camera with the print function can enlarge (zoom) the image at the time of both imaging and printing.
However, since either of the zoom processes is performed using image data prior to the zoom process, an image after the zoom process has a lower image quality than an image before the zoom process. Consequently, if a zoom process is performed at the time of imaging and a further zoom process is performed at the time of printing, the quality of the printed image may greatly deteriorate due to the synergetic effect of both processes.
On the other hand, when the ambience is dark, the electronic camera can effect imaging with the gain of a signal from an imaging element enhanced, that is, with an imaging sensitivity (ISO sensitivity) enhanced.
As described above, when imaging is effected with the enhanced ISO sensitivity, however, a noise component as well as a signal component increases. Thus, if an image captured with the enhanced ISO sensitivity is printed, the effect of noise increases, compared to the case where an image captured by normal imaging is printed, and the quality of the print image may deteriorate.
When both the imaging zoom process and print zoom process are performed, or when the image captured with the enhanced imaging sensitivity is printed, the quality of the print image may disadvantageously become lower than a desired image quality.